


Where We Belong

by SylvanWitch



Category: White Collar
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Multi, OT3, Suggested Torture, Threesome - F/M/M, Violence, casefic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-19
Updated: 2017-06-19
Packaged: 2018-11-16 03:29:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11245398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylvanWitch/pseuds/SylvanWitch
Summary: When a simple assignment goes dangerously wrong and Neal is injured, Peter learns that trust is a two-way street, love is a terrifying wonder, and his wife is even more amazing than he'd thought.  (A slow-build, first-time, OT3 romance/casefic hybrid.)





	Where We Belong

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I have seen maybe five episodes of _White Collar_ in my life, but last month I caught "Shot through the Heart," and it captured my fannish feels in a way that made me want to produce fanfiction. I tried to exorcise this with "Another Suit Ruined," but like all truly towering fan passions, this one would not easily extinguish. So, as a neophyte to this fandom, I ask that you be aware that: 
> 
> (a) This could be set at any time in canon. As I'm unfamiliar with the entirety of canon, I urge you to choose your favorite season.
> 
> (b) Your mileage may vary on characterization. The characters in this story are based on the Peter, Neal, and Elizabeth I fell in love with in "Shot through the Heart." Please forgive me if I went OOC on you.
> 
> Further notes: The NYU Law Library is just where I say it is. Those titles mentioned in this story do exist, and I based scenes set there on the actual layout from library maps on the website. However, to my knowledge, they don't actually have a museum, nor was there ever an exhibit dedicated to the Deuers' Plates, which are completely fictional. Any resemblance to exhibits real or imagined is entirely coincidental. No law books were harmed in the making of this fanfiction.
> 
> Finally, a special thanks to the lovely writers of the Write Every Month challenge over on DW, which challenge inspired me to write this fic and which writers encouraged me through the long process of pounding it together. Thank you, one and all! *hugs*

When the HRT guys burst through the door, Peter is right behind them, and even as they’re fanning out, sighting down their scopes and scanning every shadowy corner, Peter’s eyes are fixed on one thing: Neal, on his knees, naked to the waist with his hands bound behind his back.

As he nears, Peter can see that Neal’s barefoot, too, toes splayed against the filthy warehouse floor to help him stay upright. There’s a mark on his neck and another on his left cheekbone, a dirty purple line in the first case— _bastard tried to strangle him_ —and a red swelling in the second— _clocked him good_.

Neal’s head is up, his eyes wide and glassy, not fixed on Peter, though they’re within ten feet of each other now, and Peter says, “Neal?” cautiously, holding one hand down and behind him to signal everyone else to stay back.

“Neal?” he says again, softer, holstering his gun and crouching so that he appears less threatening.

This close, Peter can see that there’s something wrong with Neal’s face—something besides the rising bruise on his cheek. His lips are too-red, wet and swollen, and there’s an infinitesimal tremor where his upper lip makes its cupid’s bow.

Sickness hits him as understanding does, and he fights his reaction, swallowing carefully, holding Neal’s eyes, wearing the same neutrally pleasant expression he’s put on for countless victims succumbing to shock after a trauma.

“Neal, I’m going to free your hands, okay?”

There is a worrisome lack of recognition in Neal’s eyes, and Peter has to marshal every ounce of his will not to bundle his partner against him and lend him warmth.

He moves around behind Neal and sucks in an audible breath, cursing himself for not hiding his reaction and cursing more creatively the son of a bitch who had done this to Neal.

Neal’s hands are a dangerous blue, the baling wire wrapped around his wrists having cut off his circulation. Peter tries not to calculate the odds of Neal losing his fingers, tries not to imagine what he’d do without his expressive, beautiful hands.

He also tries not to think about how much pain Neal’s yet going to have to suffer through to try to get the feeling back. Instead, he barks, “Somebody get me wire-cutters from the van,” and then says, much more quietly, “Hang in there, Neal. Not long now.”

The pale skin of Neal’s back is a constellation of angry cigarette burns, the only color on his otherwise too-white flesh.

“I’ll need a blanket,” he says to Jones, who’d approached carefully from behind.

Someone drops the wire-cutters into his hand, and Peter leans over Neal to say, “I’ve got you,” warning him before putting a steadying hand on his right forearm, just above the wire. “Hold still, okay?”

For the first time, Neal responds, “Okay.” His voice is rough, like his throat hurts, and Peter has to take a moment to master his fury, closing his eyes against the urge to scream.

Then he’s snipping the wire where it’s twisted between Neal’s wrists and gently—ever so gently, _careful not to hurt him more than you have to_ —removing it from where it had begun to cut into his skin.

Neal hisses and sways, and Peter leans a shoulder into him, hearing a harsher sound from him when Neal’s burns come in contact with Peter’s vest. “Easy,” he says. “Let me help.”

Neal is passive as Peter begins to massage his arms from just below the join of the shoulder to just above the angry red line on his wrists. A sharp intake of breath indicates Neal’s discomfort, and then he begins to shake, just a fine trembling at first and then more visible shudders, and Peter can see the way he’s clamped his teeth together to keep them from chattering by the hard knot of muscle at his jaw.

Jones is standing on the periphery with a blanket, and Peter motions him closer, asking Neal, “Can you move your hands in front of you?” before draping the blanket gingerly across Neal’s shoulders.

Neal says, “Peter?” in a voice he hardly recognizes—wet and choked—and then Neal is falling forward, reaching out one still-blue hand to catch himself. Peter is quicker, holding him up by the balls of his shoulders, and then wrapping one arm around him from behind as Neal moans and spews a thin stream of yellow bile onto the floor.

“I’ve got you,” he promises, lips near his ear, “I’ve got you,” he says, as if the meaningless words are some protective incantation to reverse the course of events that led them to this awful juncture.

*****

It was supposed to have been an easy, in-and-out job, the kind Neal bragged he could do in his sleep.

Sitting on the edge of Peter’s desk, swinging one elegantly attired leg, Neal had said, “C’mon, boss, throw me a hardball, would you? I’m starting to think you only keep me around because I brighten up the place.”

Peter remembers that he’d tried not to smile too much, tried not to encourage the flirtation, reasoning that Neal flirted like he breathed, an involuntary, instinctual reaction to stimuli. It didn’t mean anything.

But Peter knew somewhere in the darker part of him, where he kept the things locked up that he could not look at too closely, that Neal didn’t flirt like that with anyone else, only him. It made him warm low in his belly, a heat he fought valiantly to keep from spreading to his cheeks.

“You know, one of these days that cockiness is going to get you into trouble. Again.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Neal had said with an irreverent, boyish grin.

*****

“Guess you were right,” Neal says now, and Peter wishes he didn’t know what he was talking about.

“This isn’t your fault, Neal.”

He catches his partner’s shrug out of the corner of his eye, trying to watch the road and Neal at the same time. Neal had refused to take the ambulance but had put up little resistance when Peter had insisted on driving him to the hospital himself. It was one of many worrying signs that Neal was not okay.

“I got sloppy.”

“No. No way, not you. This is not your fault.” He delivers the platitude in slow, easy doses, investing every syllable with real weight. He needs Neal to hear him.

Another shrug, followed by a shiver that Neal can’t quite suppress. He’s wearing a loaned FBI windbreaker and three pairs of paper booties on his feet, and Peter himself had draped a standard-issue emergency blanket over him before helping him buckle his seatbelt.

Neal’s hands are still not working, but by the tightness at the corners of his mouth, Peter can tell that sensation is returning in painful, biting waves.

“Almost there,” he says, a completely inane observation given the giant, glowing HOSPITAL sign looming two stories above them and half a block away.

Inside, his badge gets them an ER bed and a doctor, and ordinarily he’d feel guilty for pulling rank on the bleeding and feverish, the broken bones and lacerated scalps in the waiting room, but Neal has grown even paler, and Peter is starting to wonder about internal damage, and his hands are still mottled red and blue, the skin swollen and shiny like balloons.

He stands by while Neal proffers the usual information to an intern with a clipboard and perpetual shadows under her eyes, and then shifts uncertainly as the inevitable order comes for Neal to strip and place his clothes in the clear plastic bag provided.

There’s defeat in Neal’s shoulders when he realizes he can’t do anything for himself, helplessness and something else, something awful and hunted in his eyes when he looks to Peter, appealing for help.

“Let me,” Peter says, and he approaches slowly, reaching for the zipper of the windbreaker and sliding it carefully off of Neal’s shoulders and then spreading the elastic cuffs over his poor hands.

Neal’s already goosefleshed and shivering when Peter reaches for his zipper, putting on his just-the-facts-ma’am face and trying to pretend this isn’t intimate in a way they haven’t shared before.

The noise Neal makes when Peter accidentally brushes the back of his hand over his quiescent cock could be the result of surprise or revulsion or pain.

Peter freezes, hands on the unzipped plackets.

“It’s okay,” Neal whispers, but when Peter risks a glance at him, his head is down, and the blaze of pink on his cheeks is shocking against the pale marble perfection of the rest of him.

Peter swallows audibly and the sounds of a busy emergency room die away.

“Did he…?” God help him, he’s never been a coward before, but Peter can’t finish the question.

Neal’s tiny shake of the head makes Peter’s eyes prickle with tears of relief, and he has to close them and take a steadying breath before moving on.

He helps Neal stand and steadies him against the table’s edge as he steps out of first one pant leg and then the other.

The grey silk boxers have tiny blue fleurs-de-lis, and Peter realizes he’s staring about the same time Neal says, “Peter,” half question, half hopeful command, and Peter drags his eyes up to see his own confusion mirrored in Neal’s.

“Later,” he promises, not because he’s afraid—though he is, _god, he is_ —but because this isn’t the time nor place, and because whatever discussion they’re going to have about this will have to include El.

After the requisite joke about the hospital gown being ridiculously revealing—a joke that five minutes ago would have seemed less strained—Peter steps aside for the ER doctor, a middle-aged woman with a face that says she’s been to the wars but a manner that exudes calm and competence.

When she emerges from the room a thorough fifteen minutes later, it’s to order a series of tests with the nurse standing by and then turn her laser attention to Peter with the air of someone who expects only relevant questions.

“How is he?”

Without consulting the chart, she rattles off a list from least to most serious injuries—bruises, lacerations, burns—ending with his hands.

“I don’t think the damage to his hands is permanent—blood flow seems to be returning to normal—but I’d be more comfortable with an opinion from our vascular specialist, and he’s not in until tomorrow. He’s better off here, even if he doesn’t think so.”

This last is said with wry knowing, and Peter can’t help but curl his lip up in response. “Yeah, he’s going to hate it.”

The doctor shrugs. “Can’t be helped. We’ll get him a bed as soon as we can, and the PT on duty will be in at intervals to massage his arms, wrists, and hands.”

“Can I stay for a while?”

“At least until he’s moved to a room.”

“Thanks, Doctor.”

“You’re welcome,” she calls over her shoulder, already moving to the next room in line.

When Peter comes back in, Neal’s having his blood drawn, and there’s a queue of diagnostic equipment and personnel near the nurses’ station. “I’ll be back soon, okay?” he asks Neal, waiting for his tired nod before turning to find his way to the coffee kiosk in the lobby.

The coffee steams, untasted, in his hand as he steps outside into the cool night air to phone El. He hates to disturb her, but he knows she’ll worry if she wakes up and he’s not there, and besides, it’s Neal.

Just hearing her voice grounds him, lays to rest the constant anxious flutter he’d had in his chest since he’d seen Neal shivering on that warehouse floor.

“What is it, Peter?” El asks after a too-long period of silence.

Peter tells her in as dispassionate a tone as he can manage, which isn’t very. He hears her sharp intake of breath as she realizes what he’s telling her and then her louder expressions of sympathy and sorrow and then her righteous, gorgeous anger.

“Do you need me there, or do you think it’s too soon?”

“I don’t think he’s going to be in the ER much longer, and once they move him to a room, I’ll need to leave, so why don’t we wait until tomorrow, hon, and see what’s what?”

Her quiet words of love warm him in the chilly night air, a heat he carries down to the all-night coffee bar in the cafeteria and then back up to Neal’s bed in the ER.

The harsh hospital light robs Neal of whatever life he had left. His skin is waxy and green-tinged except along his cheek, which is an awful red, and his eyes, which seem inhumanly blue against his pallor. The bruised shadows under his eyes and his chapped, abused mouth add color, too, all in the abuse spectrum, a palette of pain and suffering.

“I’m sorry,” Peter says at last, after the silence has grown awkward between them.

“Not your fault,” Neal echoes back to him with a bitter smirk that is wholly self-directed.

“I should never have sent you in, it was—.”

“A milk run,” Neal finishes, finally meeting Peter’s eyes. There’s life there yet, he sees, a low-burning flame deep back where the real Neal lives, and Peter is suddenly fiercely happy for it. He hadn’t been sure…

“Doc thinks I’ll get these back,” Neal notes, nodding at his hands, which indeed, though still mottled, seem to be improving. Neal flexes—carefully—and his fingers bend an eighth of an inch. “And it’s not broken,” he adds, gesturing to his cheekbone. “Nothing’s broken.”

Something is, but Peter can’t say it. He can tell that Neal’s grip on his control is tenuous, and he’s lost enough of that today. Peter won’t add to the things about himself that Neal regrets.

“I’d draw him for you,” Neal begins, shifting focus, “But…” He directs another bitter half-smirk, this time at his hands.

“Tell me what he looked like, then.”

Neal does, with the exceptional focus, memory, and skill of a con man, forger, and art lover.

“He didn’t care that you saw his face.”

“He wasn’t planning for me to survive the experience,” Neal says, indicating the purple weal that collars him.

“Why did you?” Peter doesn’t mean it to come out like that, but he’d been caught up in solving the mystery.

“He knew you were coming. He was supposed to have more time with me.”

Something tightens in Peter’s chest, like an icy hand is gripping his heart and squeezing.

“You mean—.”

“He took off minutes before you came through the door. He got a call. Someone tipped him off. Probably the same someone who told him I was your CI.”

As many thoughts as are chasing themselves through Peter’s head, he expresses only one—the most important one.

“You’re not safe here.”

Neal tries for an insouciant shrug, but Peter sees the tension in his shoulders and his jaw, sees the way the pulse at his neck jumps frantically.

“I won’t let him hurt you again,” Peter promises, gripping Neal’s hand instinctively and then freezing for a breath’s worth of seconds as he realizes what he’s done. “Am _I_ hurting you?”

“Never.”

Peter doesn’t let go.

They sit there for what feels like a long time, time enough for continents to shift and reform into new shapes, for the world and themselves to be remade, maybe five minutes, maybe fifty, until they’re interrupted by the physical therapist, a slender, broad-cheeked young man with deep brown eyes, a faux-hawk, and killer triceps.

Peter has to bite back a sympathy groan as the therapist reaches for Neal’s hand, the one Peter had only just managed to let go, and says, “Let’s see how much motion you’ve got here.”

Peter leaves before he can hear Neal trying not to gasp.

When he comes back fifteen minutes later, Neal is easing himself into a wheelchair with the help of a petite nurse’s aide whose smiley-face nametag reads _Kelli_.

“We’re taking him up to Room 308,” she says. “You can come up.”

While he’d been out, he’d phoned Jones and Diana to let them know that they may have a mole in the Bureau and to arrange for protection for Neal until he can be released.

Peter had tried to insist on staying on all night, but Diana had quashed that notion. “Boss, you’re tired. Forget it. You need some rest. And Neal is going to need you tomorrow,” she’d added in softer tones.

He’d caved gracelessly, but he had to admit that he would feel better with help, at least for tonight.

When Neal is settled in the bed nearest the window, the other blessedly empty, Peter calls Diana back to let her know the room number.

To Neal, he says, “Will you be okay here for a few hours?”

Neal gives him a speaking look. He’s hollow-eyed, a vein pulsing beneath his shadowed left eye, but he says, “Peter,” steadily enough, in a tone that indicates clearly that he isn’t interested in being a victim.

“Okay,” Peter says on an exhaled breath. “Okay.” He feels like he’s giving too much away, like he has to stay or something (else) awful will happen, but he knows he’s being foolish. He needs to talk to El. He needs to sleep in their bed beside her for a few hours and regrow some of the scales he’d lost when he’d realized how close he’d come to losing Neal.

He needs…

Neal’s lashes flutter against his bruised cheeks, only a glimmer of blue betraying that he’s still conscious. Without overthinking, grasping his courage in both hands, Peter leans carefully on the bed rail and brushes a kiss across Neal’s brow.

Neal’s eyes open wide, a light and a heat suddenly aglow there, a Neal he both knows and doesn’t really know, not yet, not wholly.

“Good night,” Peter whispers against Neal’s temple, feeling a wash of warm breath against his throat as Neal echoes the words.

As he leaves Neal’s room, he comes hard up against Diana, who erases an expression Peter thought might have been sympathy and says only, “We’ve got this, Boss,” nodding at the exit at the end of the hall, where Jones leans quite obtrusively in such a way that his badge shows. “Go home.”

He does.

*****

El greets him at the door with a wordless embrace. She’s sleep-warm, hair mussed in a soft halo around her face, and he breathes in her sweetness for long minutes before she pats him on the back and says, “Let’s go to bed.”

“El,” he starts, but she shushes him with a finger over his lips.

“Sleep now. Talk later.”

It’s a measure of either his exhaustion or confusion—maybe both—that Peter acquiesces without further words, following her faithfully to the bedroom, letting her help him out of his much-abused suit, and sinking onto the bed beside her with a long, loud exhale of relief. He’s so damned grateful to be here, to have her beside him, that tears rise and he blinks them away, remembering that tomorrow he’s going to have to risk all of this to tell her the truth.

Much as Peter knows El, he’s not sure how she’s going to take the revelation that he loves Neal and wants him in a way he hadn’t imagined wanting anyone other than El. Peter wouldn’t blame her for wanting him to leave, to give her time to think things through. He’s imagining his life on hold, living out of a suitcase in a hotel room until she comes to some peace with it all, and that thought chases him down into sleep, where he dreams of the ones he loves pale and bloodless, lips kiss-bruised, eyes open and unseeing, kept forever from him by a wall of glass that no amount of pounding can break.

Peter wakes to El looking at him, hand on his cheek, and at her simple, “Tell me,” he spills everything—the fear and the sorrow and the anger at what had been done to Neal, his realization that what he was feeling was more than simple warm regard, the way he held Neal’s hand, the kiss on the brow and how Neal’s breath against his throat had stirred something impossibly huge and powerful in him.

When he’s done, he looks up from where their hands are clasped tightly together, they having moved to the side of the bed but not out of it as Peter had spilled out his every thought and feeling. El’s looking back at him with a wry fondness, her eyes telegraphing love and understanding even as her mouth says, “It took you long enough.”

He laughs until he chokes on a sob, and El holds him against her and murmurs all the truths of their life together into his hair, words he hears in counterpoint to her heartbeat, steady and miraculous under his ear.

God, but he loves her.

“What do we— I mean, how?” Peter asks eventually, and El’s shrug lifts his head from her breast.

“Details later,” she says. “For now, Neal needs you.”

“Us,” he answers, and she gives that 1000 watt smile that never fails to stir something fundamental in him.

“We don’t have time,” she chides gently, prodding him off the bed and in the general direction of the bathroom.

“Right,” he acknowledges ruefully, feeling like he’s 20 years old again—full of possibility, virile, immortal.

He showers hastily, dresses in slacks and a blue Henley, and El meets him at the door in a robe that does absolutely nothing to get him out of there quicker. She hands him a coffee and a fresh breakfast croissant, kisses him deeply, stares into his eyes, and says, “Bring him home.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Peter answers, tossing her a mock salute as he heads for the car.

*****

When Peter arrives at the hospital, Jones is standing guard at the closed door of Neal’s room.

A querying eyebrow gets Peter the explanation.

“The vascular specialist is in with him. The PT was here a few minutes ago.”

It’s not even eight a.m.

He sends Jones to the cafeteria for fortifying caffeine and takes up his own posture of patient waiting, which is rewarded only a few minutes later when the door opens and a tall, portly doctor with an impressive mustache and an accent from the Indian subcontinent emerges, still chuckling over something that must have transpired moments before.

“Ah, you are Agent Burke?”

Peter offers his hand.

“Dr. Mehta,” he returns, nodding. “Your Mr. Caffrey is a strong man,” he continues. “Very strong hands. I’ve reviewed the scans. There should be no permanent damage. I’ll send the physical therapist along with instructions for exercises he must do regularly at home for the next few days, but I see no reason that he cannot be released today.”

Peter lets out a breath he hadn’t been aware of holding.

“Thank you, Doctor.” He shakes the doctor’s hand again almost absently, remembering his manners only just in time. He’d almost been overcome by the urgency to see for himself that Neal is okay.

He is. He’s sitting up in bed, picking at a breakfast tray with a fork held ponderously in fingers still unwilling to do the fine motor work of eating, and he’s wearing a familiar expression of mulishness that makes Peter smile.

“Something funny?” Neal grouses, and Peter wipes the smile off his face with some little effort.

“Just good to see—and hear—you’re feeling better.”

“I’ll be better when I can get into actual clothes and get out of here,” he answers, dropping his fork with a disgusted look.

“Dr. Mehta seems like a good guy.”

Neal offers a grudging smile of his own. “He says I’ll be good as new in no time.”

 _Will you?_ Peter thinks. He doesn’t say it, but the thought seems to occur to Neal, as well, who pushes away the lap table moodily and stares at his hands.

“I’m fine,” he insists. He seems to be trying to convince them both.

“Neal, if you need to talk—”

“I _need_ to get out of here.”

“Neal…”

Neal blows out a harsh breath and at last looks up at Peter. “It wasn’t the first time,” he says baldly, finally confirming something about which Peter had wondered in their earliest days working together. “It wasn’t the worst, either. I’m fine, Peter. Really. I’m not going to let the bastard derail all the hard work I’ve done, the life I’ve made… _we’ve_ made.”

Peter reaches out to hold Neal’s near hand, squeezing gently for the thrill of getting a gentle squeeze in return. This gesture, as much as any, convinces Peter that Neal is telling the truth: He’ll be okay.

“Well, let’s get you dressed, then. Elizabeth is anxious to fuss over you.”

Neal’s eyebrow goes up.

“I—that is, _we_ —were hoping you’d come home with us for a few days?” He puts the question at the end because Neal’s wearing one of the few expressions that Peter’s never been able to accurately parse. He’d learned from Elizabeth long ago to just shut his mouth when he’s not sure of the emotional waters he’s navigating.

He waits, trying to relay with his own expression just how much they both want Neal to share their home. Neal seems to recognize Peter’s sincerity because his expression relaxes into an easy warmth that inspires fluttering in Peter’s stomach.

“I’d like that,” he says. “Any chance of a suit?”

“Mozzie’s on his way with one now.”

*****

If he’s still a little white around the lips and moving less gracefully than usual, Neal is nevertheless much more himself once he’s back in his suit, which task he’d insisted on accomplishing all on his own. He shoos Peter out with a significant look, and twenty minutes later Peter turns at the door opening to see Neal standing there looking mostly Neal-like.

Something clenched beneath his breastbone relaxes a little.

When Sandy, the nurse on duty, has come and gone with a stack of discharge forms and instructions and prescriptions, the orderly, Terrell, appears with a wheelchair, which Neal accepts grudgingly only after Peter says, “I have to go get the car. Don’t make me get a ticket waiting for you.”

Neal may not have wanted to appear fragile, but in the bright light of a sunny New York morning, his skin looks like porcelain chased with fine blue filigree, and he sighs, just a hasty escape of relieved air, when he sinks into the passenger seat.

The ride home is made in mostly companionable silence, but as they near Peter and El’s place, Peter catches Neal’s expression and the cant of his shoulders, tense against the seatback.

“Hey,” he says softly as he pulls up to the door. “It’s okay, you know. We don’t have to talk about anything or…do anything or….” He gives up. He’s never been good at this. If he can just get Neal in the door, he knows El will wipe the wooden expression off of Neal’s face, the one that says he’s faking it as hard as he can.

He reaches out to touch the back of Neal’s hand, and Neal turns his hand over and holds on, their fingers laced together, palms tight enough that Peter can feel his own heartbeat thrumming between them.

It’s running fast.

He’s just taking in a breath to flail his way through another series of awkward disclaimers when El opens the door and comes out onto the top step. She’s wearing a blue dress that accentuates her eyes and her curves and a smile that says Neal’s welcome for as long as he cares to stay.

At Peter’s nod in El’s direction, Neal turns, and when he catches sight of her, he visibly relaxes.

Not for the first time, Peter marvels at El’s personal magic.

Once Neal is settled to El’s satisfaction on the couch, pillows arranged in such a way that they don’t put too much pressure on the cigarette burns on his back, and she’s seen to tea and laid out an array of snacks, both sweet and savory, that would put a Park Avenue caterer to shame, the air seems to go still, and even the ebullient lady of the house seems at a temporary loss for words.

She’s still smiling, though, that brilliant smile that lights Peter up, only this time it’s trained on Neal, who is almost basking in the glow or might be if pain weren’t drawing the skin of his cheeks tight and exhaustion pulling color from his lips.

“You know, why don’t we do this later?” El says after what had seemed like a minor eternity to Peter.

Neal nods gratefully, leaning forward in slow increments to set his untouched tea down on the coffee table.

“Let me show you your room?” Her inflection suggests that it’s up to Neal, but his grateful half-smile is all the answer they need.

Peter rises as El does, but she waves him down with a swift, subtle motion that Neal either doesn’t see or is grateful to ignore. He manages to get up on his own, and El manages not to appear to be hovering as she leads him to the spare bedroom on the second floor, nearest the bathroom.

Neal struggles on the stairs, posture radiating a bone-deep weariness, and Peter looks away to give him the illusion of privacy. He can hear El chattering brightly from the second floor and knows that it’s her own way of doing the same.

Downstairs again a few minutes later, El sits on the couch and beckons Peter to join her, and they hold hands and say nothing, listening to the toilet flush and the plumbing swoosh overhead.

At last, with a click Peter was holding his breath to hear, the door to the spare room closes. They share a relieved, identical sigh, which makes them both laugh, a weak approximation of merriment but the best they can do, he suspects, under the circumstances.

El squeezes his hand, “He’ll be okay. He’s strong.”

“Maybe.” Peter wants to believe her but isn’t sure he can. “This isn’t the first time,” he adds. “He told me at the hospital that,” he swallows, finding even the words repugnant, “it wasn’t the worst. This time, I mean.”

El leans against him and whispers, “Oh, Peter,” and then they sit with their mutual sorrow for a time until El offers a watery smile and leans in to kiss the corner of his mouth.

“I suppose it’s too early for us to go to bed, huh?” she asks. There is an uncertain hope in the question.

“I should actually go in to the office. If we’re going to catch this guy, I need to be there.” He squeezes her hand, kisses her, and gets up. “I’ll call you in a little while to see how you’re both doing.”

As he heads to their room to change into something less comfortable, he pauses and turns to her, “I love you, Elizabeth Burke.”

“I love you, Peter Burke,” she answers, coming close to touch the line that creases his brow.

Her touch is welcome, but it doesn’t smooth away the worry.

*****

When he comes through the door with dusk casting that strange and wonderful silence over even their quietly busy street, Peter is relieved to glimpse Neal through the door to the kitchen sitting at the breakfast bar, leaning over a cup of tea and smiling at something El has just said.

Satchmo is sacked out at Neal’s feet, but when Peter enters, his tail thumps once in acknowledgement, and between that and the kiss El breezes across his cheek and the way Neal’s warm look lingers on him as he rolls up his sleeves to help her with dinner, Peter feels the tension of the day’s futile work leaving him.

It’s good to be home.

They eat at the breakfast bar rather than make Neal move, and the food is simple and delicious, the company easy and comfortable, and though Neal tires before they reach dessert, he won’t budge, insisting that he’s “fine,” which Peter accepts if only to sustain this fiction of happiness and health a little longer.

At last, though, Peter breaks the illusion, “We didn’t find him, but we’ve got feelers out all over the city.”

Neal is shaking his head before Peter finishes. “You’re not going to find him. He’s gone underground, where you can’t follow.”

“Maybe Mozzie…” Elizabeth suggests, pushing the last of her cobbler around the plate, making arabesques in red.

“He’s already on it,” Neal assures her.

“And if he finds Cutter?” It’s the first time either of them has used the guy’s name, and he watches Neal’s face, gauging. To his credit, Neal confines his reaction to an involuntary twitch in the corner of his eye.

“He’ll call.”

“You?”

“Us.”

“There’s an ‘us,’ then?” He’s not mad, not really. He trusts Neal; he does. But in this, he’d understand Neal wanting to take his own kind of revenge on the man who had tortured and abused him and left him bound like an animal, bleeding in the cold.

“Peter,” El begins warningly, but Neal says, “No, El, it’s alright. Peter’s got a point.”

Neal turns in his seat to face Peter, catches and holds his eyes before saying, succinctly. “I’m not going to pretend that I don’t want to make Cutter suffer in ways only I can. You know what I could do to him given the time and resources.”

He doesn’t wait for Peter’s nod before he goes on, “But I’m not going to risk what we have here,” and by his gesture Neal indicates that he isn’t talking only about their working relationship. “By playing cowboy on this. I want Cutter. I want him to pay for what he did to me. I trust you to make that happen, Peter.”

There have been occasions when Neal Caffrey has lied to Peter’s face, and he’s believed him. There have been times when Neal has told him the truth, and Peter’s only response had been to treat him like a suspect.

This moment is fraught with none of that doubt or confusion or mistrust.

“Thank you,” Peter says, having to force the harsh whisper out around a lump that’s risen in his throat—doubtless his heart trying to climb out of his mouth. It feels three sizes too big, like his pulse should be measurable on the Richter scale. He has to clench his hands in his lap to keep from grabbing Neal and kissing him.

The look Neal’s giving back suggests he wants just that.

El clears her throat delicately. “Do you boys need me to step out?” She’s mostly teasing, but there’s a certain heat in her tone that suggests she wouldn’t mind staying.

Neal raises a challenging eyebrow, but before Peter can respond with an extremely specific answer to El’s provocation, Neal’s face is split by an enormous yawn. That he only belatedly rushes to cover his mouth tells Peter all he needs to know—Neal isn’t ready for anything nearly so energetic as what he’d just been fantasizing about.

“Bed,” he orders perfunctorily, and then adds, “To sleep,” as Neal’s yawn morphs into a wicked grin.

El comes around the bar to lean in on Neal’s far side and whisper something that widens his eyes and sets a rose high on his cheeks.

 _That’s my girl_ , Peter thinks proudly, watching Neal slide from the chair carefully and move a little more fluidly toward the stairs.

“He’s getting better,” El says, giving voice to Peter’s very thought. “He just needs a little more time.”

“That we’ve got,” Peter promises, turning in his chair to spread his knees so he can make room for El.

“What do you say we do the dishes later?” she asks, slipping a hand between them to cup him through his trousers.

“You have the best ideas,” he breathes, taking her ass in both hands to pull her closer.

“Bed?”

It is a good long while before the dishes are finally done.

*****

Over the next several days, Neal spends a lot of time sleeping, which is a sign that he’s still healing, and a lot of time alone in the living room, eyes open but unseeing over the pages of a book, which is a sign that he’s still processing what’s been done to him. He never misses his exercises, setting an alarm for them, El says, and his hands soon regain their usual flexibility. When Peter comes in one evening to see him sketching Cutter’s face, he knows that Neal’s hands, at least, are back to normal.

Peter spends his days at the office acting as though it’s business as usual. After hours, he meets with Diana and Jones in pre-arranged locations, driving miles out of his way to shake any observers, choosing noisy bars and underground clubs to confound parabolic surveillance.

To their credit, the other two treat it like a serious conspiracy, not like Peter’s acting overprotective of his lover. That they know something’s shifted in the relationship between their boss and his CI is apparent, but besides a slight softening in Diana’s expression when she asks after Neal’s health, neither of them seem inclined to judge.

Cutter proves exceptionally elusive, and to the agent who had captured Neal Caffrey, this is unsettling. Clearly, Peter had vastly underestimated Cutter when he’d sent Neal in to con a low-level fence into incriminating himself. Just as clear is the fact that Cutter was playing the long game, having planned each move in the complicated dance, only underestimating, in his turn, Peter’s capability and resolve.

At home at night, there’s an unspoken agreement to avoid work talk over dinner, which they share sometimes at the breakfast bar, sometimes in the dining room, where the capricious light of candles paints Neal’s face in shifting shadows and Peter is shocked breathless in unexpected moments by Neal’s beauty and his strength.

The yellow is almost gone from his cheekbone, the ligature mark around his neck only a suggestion of suffocating pain, when Peter is surprised in another of those moments by an answering look in Neal’s eyes.

It’s not that he hadn’t believed that Neal wanted him. Little touches, stolen kisses, lingering glances had assured him of his place in Neal’s regard. But he’d never wanted to presume, to appear as though there was any kind of expectation, even an iota of pressure, suggesting that Neal was obligated to come to Peter and El’s bed.

Now, Peter seeks El’s face across the table, and she smiles, a wide, complex expression that offers him permission and more—encouragement. It says she knows Peter’s palms are suddenly damp, that he’s stricken with terror not that he’ll betray her or even hurt Neal but that this delicate, impossible balance they’ve struck will somehow be destroyed by his at last acting on the deep ache he’s been trying to live around for days now.

“I’ll get the dishes,” is all El says, but she cants her head toward the hallway leading to their bedroom, and Neal’s low, “Yeah?” is heartbreaking for its eager uncertainty, as if he’s being offered something he doesn’t quite believe he’d ever be worthy enough to ask for, let alone have.

She comes around the table to where Neal stands, hands loose at his sides, like he’s not sure where he’s supposed to put them, an uncertainty so uncharacteristic that Peter feels his heart swell and tears prickle at the corner of his eyes. El takes Neal’s face in her gentle hands and holds him there, looking deeply into his eyes, so that he can see that he’s beloved and that he’s allowed.

Then she kisses him, urgently, open-mouthed, and Neal moans helplessly and clutches at her, reticence forgotten as the kiss deepens, and Peter feels himself growing aroused but does not invite himself into this particular embrace. This is for Neal, for El; it’s a conferral, a kind of permission, that Peter and Neal will have this night, and too El will have hers, and the three of them will have forever to work out the subtleties of their entangled desires.

There will have to be talking sometime, a conversation about boundaries and possibilities, but for now, El pulls away a little, ghosts a benediction of a kiss across the faded bruise on Neal’s cheek, and steps back, opening her hands in a clear gesture of offering.

Peter kisses her in turn, a slow, deep promise of a kiss, and then he takes Neal’s hand and leads him to the bedroom, feeling the breath squeeze in his chest, his heart pounding against his ribs, a heaviness settling low in his belly, and heat flooding him everywhere.

Neal closes the door behind them as they enter the room, and then a silence descends made up of one part uncertainty and two parts hope. Neal is trembling, a faint, fine tremor that telescopes the frantic beating of his heart, which Peter can see in the blue artery beneath his jaw.

Chasing his instincts, Peter brushes a finger over that pulse. Neal’s eyes flutter closed and he breathes out, a long, shuddering exhalation that’s loud in the over-quiet space.

“We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.”

Neal’s eyes open, piercing and direct, and he takes a step towards Peter, saying, “I know,” as he does so, two syllables couched in a breathtaking trust.

It’s Peter’s turn to exhale, a tightening in his breast almost a physical ache, punching the breath out of him.

“I won’t hurt you,” he whispers, and Neal takes a step closer, saying, “I know,” softer, lower.

“I want you so much,” he breathes in the inches left between them, and Neal closes the final gap, murmuring, “I know” against Peter’s lips, insinuating his tongue between them, urging Peter’s mouth open, hands confident at Peter’s waist, pulling his shirt out of his trousers, skimming up his ribs and eking a moan out of him.

“I want you more,” Neal teases, pulling out of the kiss with a final, wet swipe of his tongue across Peter’s tingling lips.

“That’s impossible,” Peter promises, nothing but the raw, honest truth in his voice, and Neal laughs, a low, wicked sound, confident and gorgeous, and then moves to unbutton his shirt.

“Let me,” Peter asks, and they share a long, steady look before Neal nods, dropping his eyes in a false demureness that is hotter than it has any right to be.

“Tease,” Peter says.

“You’re the one taking his time getting me out of my clothes,” Neal answers, holding his arms away from his sides in invitation.

Peter takes it, takes him slowly and gently, careful not to abrade any of Neal’s many healing burns, easing his shirt off and then his tee-shirt, pausing with it halfway up to suck on one flat, delicious nipple, earning him a satisfying gasp.

When Neal is half-naked before him, Peter leans in to lay a line of nipping bites along the perfect bow of his collarbone, and Neal pants, breath harsh against his ear, a litany of pleading and Peter’s name and inventive suggestions as Peter works his belt and button open, slides his zipper down, gets him out of his pants while he’s still promising something anatomically improbable.

“My God,” Peter breathes, “Neal.” He doesn’t know what’s on his face, but he hopes it’s what he’s feeling—possessive and aroused and so lucky, so goddamned lucky. He’s lousy at words, so he tries to make his hands say what his mouth won’t.

He traces the delicate arch of Neal’s collarbone, the marble pillar of his throat. He marvels at the soft down trail that arrows toward the root of him, gloriously full, long and graceful like everything about him.

“You’re overdressed,” Neal notes, reaching for Peter’s shirt, and Peter is gratified that Neal’s usual regard for the condition of his clothes is abandoned now in this moment of need, for soon enough he’s naked too, clothes a constellation on the floor around their feet, and they’re touching from toes to tongues and Peter thinks that it’s a pity he isn’t going to last, but this is good, too good, and he might say that out loud, because Neal laughs, high and a little wild, and then they’re tumbling onto the bed, and this is even better, and Peter’s pretty sure his heart is going to give out before either of them reaches climax.

A deep purple shadow on Neal’s sternum reminds Peter all at once what he could have lost, what it would have been like to have never had this.

“Turn over?” he asks, giving Neal every chance to say no, but Neal only reddens and nods, the apple of his throat bobbing as he swallows nervously.

There’s a puckered red scar on the ridge of one perfect, sharp shoulder blade, and when Peter sucks on it, Neal cries out, a lost, open sound that sends shudders through them both.

He drags his lips up the knobs of Neal’s spine and then mouths back down them, sucking a deep red love mark into the hollow of his back. Neal writhes beneath him, keening, rubbing himself against the sheets, clawing at them, head thrown back, voice raspy and breaking Peter’s name on frantic breaths. It’s all Peter can do not to come like that, with only the sporadic friction of Neal’s thigh against his cock and Neal shaking apart beneath him.

He wants to bury himself so deep that they’ll never be parted. Neal will never be hurt again. Nothing will matter but this.

Peter groans, “Neal,” a question and a promise, and Neal reaches blindly back with one hand and urges Peter closer, struggles to spread his legs wider in blatant invitation.

“Please,” Neal pleads, and Peter pulls away only long enough to fumble the lube from the bedside drawer, flip the cap open with shaking fingers, and then skate those fingers reverently down the crease of Neal’s perfect ass to the tight place that jumps under his first touch.

“God,” Neal groans, pushing up against his hesitant finger. “God, please, Peter, please!” Quieter, he whispers hoarsely, “Do it,” and Peter does, working through the preparation with single-minded focus, trying to ignore how Neal’s body clenches tight and hot around his fingers and how the rough rub of the hair on the back of Neal’s thigh is exquisite torture.

“I won’t break,” Neal growls, shoving up harder so that Peter’s three fingers slide in as far as they’ll go.

Peter can’t take any more and pulls them out, almost too far gone himself to hear Neal’s gratifying whine as he does.

Then he’s slicking himself and nudging Neal’s opening, Neal who’s now holding his breath beneath him, and then he’s pushing past the delicious, initial resistance and possessing him by slow inches. Neal cries out, inarticulate and wild, and Peter bites his own lip to keep from coming right then and there.

He holds himself still, feeling everything—the way Neal’s body clenches around him, the frantic beating of Neal’s heart beneath the palm he has pressed to his breast, half holding him up.

Neal rasps, “Peter,” repeats his name again, pushes back against him, urging him to move, and then he’s gone to all but the sensation of pleasure, the profound rightness of Neal surging under him, around him, the slap of his balls, the weight of Neal in his hand when he slides it down his body to take him utterly, pushing him forward into his palm with every thrust until Neal is rocking and keening through gritted teeth and at last crying out, “Oh God, Peter, Peter, I can’t—.”

He can. They do.

The desperate clutch of Neal’s body, the way he ends on a shuddering moan, the sudden hot splash across Peter’s fingers and the scent sharp on the air, the certainty that he’s made Neal his, utterly and for always, plunges Peter over the edge of his own obliteration, black stars shooting across his field of vision as he squeezes his eyes shut and bites down on the scream that wants to rip from him, alerting not only El, not just the neighbors, but all of New York that Neal Caffrey has, at last and forever, been claimed.

The first words Peter hears when the blood thunder abates and he has at last regained some measure of his senses are, “I love you, but you’re heavy.”

He huffs a weak laugh, remembers to gentle his dismount, slides to one side and turns his head to see Neal in close-up, face against the pillow, one eye open to half-mast, something like a stoned smirk twitching up the visible corner of his mouth.

“You love me?”

“Figure of speech,” Neal answers, but they both hear the truth anyway, and Peter isn’t responsible for the goofiness of his answering smile.

“I love you too,” he manages, a yawn already splitting his face.

“Enough to sleep in the wet spot?” Neal grimaces a little, but he doesn’t look too put out.

“Enough to bring you a warm washcloth in the morning.”

Neal seems to think that’s bargain enough, because he nods sleepily, eyes closing, and Peter has time to think how young Neal looks like that before he succumbs to the identical urge and closes his own.

*****

When sunlight is painting a rose-gold blush across the floor through the blinds, El wakes them with a rap on the door and a singsong, “Good morning” through the barrier. She sounds smug—deservedly so—and Peter smiles to imagine her expression.

“This is really happening,” Neal says from beside him, and when Peter turns his head, he sees Neal propped on one elbow staring at Peter’s face.

“It is,” he affirms, not changing his smile in the least for Neal, whose answering smile is less confident, as if by the morning light, he’s noticed things about this new relationship that he hadn’t seen the night before.

“Regrets?” Peter asks, even as his chest tightens, even as he starts to formulate a hundred counter-arguments, but Neal shakes his head.

“No,” he says, slowly, as if that answer took some thought. “Just…” He shrugs. “I’m not sure how this is supposed to work.”

Peter shrugs right back. “It’s not like we’ve got a handbook for this,” he says. “We’re just as new to it as you are.”

Neal nods again, but the unease haunting his eyes grows more pronounced, and Peter rolls onto his side so that they’re only inches apart.

He gestures, managing to encompass bedhead and morning breath and pubic hair crimped with dried come—all of it. “ _We’re_ new to it,” he says first, emphasizing the collective. “But this isn’t new.” He spreads his hand over Neal’s heart, feeling it kick up a notch under his touch, and he leans in for a morning kiss, glorious and imperfect and true.

When he pulls away, Neal is smiling, and the fear on his face is gone. Peter knows Neal well enough to understand that whatever worries he’s put away still lurk somewhere inside of him, but since Neal’s the bravest person he knows, for his part, Peter refuses to worry.

“This will work,” he asserts, sounding confident enough for all of them.

From the hallway outside El says, “If you’re not out in five minutes, I’m coming in.”

Neal raises an eyebrow in inquiry, and Peter feels his blood go hot at even the thought of it—the three of them, naked and touching everywhere, rolling around on the bed that he and Neal had ruined the night before.

But a glance at the clock alarms him into action, and he steals a last, quick kiss before sliding off the bed and heading for the bathroom.

“Join me?” he throws over his shoulder, putting a little more swish into his step than is precisely necessary for ambulation.

Neal’s answer is immediate and physical, rather than verbal, and Peter resigns himself to being late.

When they emerge fifteen minutes later, El is leaning in the doorway taking her time about looking them up and down. Peter considers dropping his towel, glances at Neal to see what he might be thinking, and then El says, “Diana called. She needs you at the office. Both of you,” she adds, when only Peter snaps into action.

Neal hesitates only a moment before El says, “I brought some of your things down. I hope that’s okay?”

As she indicates the ditty and suit bags on the bed, there’s something endearingly tentative in her face, and Peter realizes with a touch of shame that he’d gotten so used to El’s competence that despite what he’d just said to Neal, Peter had forgotten that this is new to her, too. She’d always seemed so sure of it all that he’d overlooked what should have been obvious: She’s making it up as she goes along, just like the rest of them.

“Of course it is, El. Thank you,” Neal answers, closing the distance between them to stop right in front of her with a question in his eyes that she answers by rising on her toes to give him a deep and lingering kiss.

When she steps back, Neal is flushed and smiling, his hands clenched on his towel as if it’s a struggle to resist the urge to drop it and have at her.

For her part, El is making no secret of her hungry admiration for every part of Neal’s body that she can see.

“Later?” she asks, voice smoky, and Peter has to resist his own urge when Neal gives her a smile that says exactly what he’s imagining in that moment.

Peter swallows hard and busies himself with girding his loins for a day at the office, almost relieved when El leaves to put together a portable breakfast for them and Neal turns his attention to his own dressing.

“I don’t deserve her,” Neal observes as he precedes Peter out of the room.

“Neither do I,” Peter answers.

“We’re both lucky bastards.” Neal’s voice is a little high with wonder and maybe nerves.

“Yes, yes we are.”

*****

Peter calls Diana on the way out the door and she says, “Hey, do you remember that CI from ’03, Stevens?” and he answers, “Yes,” acknowledging that he’s understood the signal and turning left instead of right at the next corner. “Is he giving you trouble again?”

“Yeah.”

“Is he still hanging at the pool hall over by the park?”

“Yeah.”

“See you there.” There’s no Stevens, no pool hall, and no park, but Peter knows where to go.

“We’re not going to the office,” Neal notes, taking in the change in scenery with his usual equanimity. If it weren’t for a slight tightness around his mouth, Peter would think Neal was back to normal.

Normal is relative, of course, and when they pull in behind the defunct Stevens’ Mattress warehouse and see Diana leaning against the hood of her car, a figure in the passenger seat shadowed by the lee of the building, Neal sits up straighter, as if he’s gotten an electrical shock.

Peter doesn’t have time to say, “Neal?” before Cutter is exiting Diana’s car and Peter is saying, “Christ!” and pulling his gun and trying to get out ahead of Neal, who is already crossing the broken asphalt in ground-eating strides.

“What—?” is as far as he gets before Neal is level with Cutter, who despite a salaciously vicious grin has his hands out and open at his sides, the universal sign of _I’m unarmed_ , and Neal is shoving him into the side of Diana’s car, wrenching his wrist up between his shoulder blades and kicking his ankles apart. It’s textbook law enforcer, and Peter has a moment of weird pride before he starts to wonder at it. Neal isn’t the type to use force if he can avoid it.

“Diana,” Peter barks, not really a question, and she’s talking, but so is Neal, and the tone of his words more than the words themselves make Peter hesitate to interfere, make him think about Neal half-naked on his knees, shivering and glassy-eyed, and he almost steps in then just to take over because he doesn’t want Neal to have to touch the guy, when Diana says something that catches his full attention.

“Say that again?” Peter orders, warning in his voice, and she has the grace to look ashamed before she says, “He’s working with me, Peter. He’s with me.”

And that makes no sense, which he must say out loud, because Diana is rushing through an explanation that he is still only half listening to because Neal’s expression is unreadable but Cutter’s is all calculated glee, and Peter’s suddenly afraid that he’s missing something vital, something that could hurt them all.

But Diana’s voice is louder now and more urgent, and he finally turns to her—Diana, whom he’s trusted with his life, with El’s life, with Neal’s—and he says, “Explain,” in a tone that suggests she has less than a minute to make a case for herself.

When she’s finished speaking, Peter is silent. At some point in Diana’s monologue, Neal had moved up beside him, letting Cutter go, their little confab apparently finished. Peter can’t tell from Neal’s expression if it’s a mutually satisfying conclusion, however, and that worries him…although not as much as what Diana’s just revealed.

“It must be good evidence,” Neal says, and that’s not what Peter was expecting. Diana nods, though, that serious, thoughtful look on her face she always gets when her mind is racing to a conclusion, and Peter staves off a shiver. He doesn’t say, _It’s not what it looks like_ , because he has to trust them to know that. Does trust them. Him.

“He’s a master forger,” Neal continues, like he’d remarked on the weather or the stock market, like Diana hadn’t just told them that Cutter-who-wasn’t-Cutter had proof that Peter had accepted bribes from an infamous fence in exchange for information on who was in the department’s tickler file of up-and-comers. “One of the greats,” Neal goes on, but where usually there’d be admiration here there’s only calculation, and Peter feels another shiver riding his spine because Neal’s tone means he’s afraid, means there’s a possibility Cutter could pull this off.

“Not Kazmierczak,” he muses. “Not O’Connell. Mierstag? Leitch? DelVecchio?”

Behind them, Cutter turns his habitual sneer into an ugly laugh, and Neal’s eyes go steely and then a smile unveils something dangerous in him, and he turns around and strolls back to the man, who’s leaning against the hood with his arms and ankles crossed, the picture of studied indifference.

Neal doesn’t touch him. He just leans in and says something that’s once again too low for Peter to hear. Cutter’s face turns to stone, only his eyes alive and moving, searching Neal’s face for some sign. Whatever he sees there wipes the smirk off of his face.

He raises a conciliatory hand. “Okay.”

Neal rises gracefully, moving back to Peter’s side, saying, “The evidence he’s got is good enough to fool all but a few. There are three, maybe four people in the world who could debunk it. The others won’t, and I can’t.”

 _For obvious reasons_ , Peter hears. Conflict of interest. Likelihood of complicity. _Love_.

Diana looks like she’s about to say something, but Neal holds up a hand.

“We don’t have time to argue the merits. If he doesn’t send a kill order by noon, the file goes to Hughes automatically.” Neal’s face gives nothing away, but Peter knows this has to be killing him.

“What does he want?” Peter’s throat is tight, his voice strange in his own ears.

“Immunity from prosecution in exchange for the name of the mole.”

“That’s it?” Diana’s skepticism is understandable—the guy’s got them by the short and curlies; he could have asked for a lot more—but Peter is too busy seeing red to process the logic.

“No. No way. He doesn’t get to walk away from what he did to you.”

“Boss,” Diana starts, but it’s Neal’s hand on his arm that stops him.

“It’s okay.”

“It’s _not_.”

“But it will be,” he murmurs, the words _trust me_ in his tone and in his eyes. There’s a gleam there that Peter’s seen before, and he thinks he glimpses Neal’s plan, the devilish intellect lurking behind an urbane mask, donned to keep Diana in the dark.

“What did you agree to with him to make him give up his name?” As always, Diana is a terrier, jaw set, immovable.

Neal shakes his head. “That’s not part of the deal.”

“What deal would that be, Caffrey?” she asks, but Peter holds up a forestalling hand.

“I’m going to have to ask you to walk away, Diana.”

“Boss?” Her voice is mingled disbelief and concern.

“We’ve got this. And if it goes south, the farther you are from it, the better for you. We aren’t going to take you down with us.”

She holds his look for a long moment and then at last gives a tight, unhappy nod. Without hesitating she shoves Cutter off her bumper and walks to the door, opens it, gets in. The engine thrums to life, and she backs away just enough to avoid hitting them as she makes a tight turn and peels off without even a glance in the rearview.

*****

Having Cutter in the backseat makes the back of Peter’s neck crawl, and he keeps darting glances in the rearview. Cutter looks smug in a way that Peter finds deeply unsettling. Whatever Neal’s agreed to on the side, it’s got Cutter acting like a cat with canary on its breath.

“Send the kill order,” Peter says, spearing Cutter with a glance.

He gives a scathing look and shakes his head. “Forget it. I want my immunity in writing before I give up my leverage.”

“Okay,” Neal says, shooting Peter a quelling look as he starts to protest. “Give the man what he wants, Agent Burke.”

Peter ponders Neal’s choice of words, and all at once he gets it, and he shoots Cutter a tight, pained smile, as if it physically hurts him to agree to his terms, “Alright.”

It’s only as they’re pulling in to the employee parking garage under the office that Cutter puts up a protest. “Hey, wait a minute! You can’t take me in there. He’ll see!”

“So what?” Peter says, shrugging. “Nothing he can do to you in custody. He’d be a fool to try anything at the office.”

“Safe as houses,” Neal agrees, sounding almost amiable. Peter’s struck once again by exactly how good he is. “Still,” Neal adds, as though he’s reconsidering, “We should use the freight elevator. Can’t be too careful.”

Peter nods. “Sure, that’s the most private route.”

Of course, the freight elevator is as heavily monitored as every other ingress to the upper offices, and as it’s specifically used to transport special guests—VIPs whose security is tight, confidential informants being deposed for RICO cases, especially dangerous or fractious suspects—it has a dedicated monitor and personnel keeping an eye on it twenty-four/seven.

Anyone employing it for special use purposes is required to file a right to access form. They’ll be flagged the minute they step onto the elevator. The mole, if he’s as high up as Peter suspects he is, will be informed of the irregularity almost immediately.

Neal shouldn’t even know all of this, so naturally he does.

It’s a short walk to the conference room, and they pass no one, but Cutter’s unease is nonetheless palpable, and Peter smiles to himself. Let the bastard squirm.

“Are you recording this?” Cutter asks as he makes a show of getting comfortable in a chair across the table from Peter. Neal lounges against the wall behind and to the left of Cutter, where he has a clear sight-line to Peter, but Cutter can’t see him at all except as a dim movement on his periphery.

It’s a classic technique, and Peter gives Neal a private smile, just a quick quirk of his lips to let him know he’s noticed the move.

Cutter, for all that he’s supposed to be some big-shot in the world of high-end crime, doesn’t seem to notice, or if he does, he’s too preoccupied with the terms of the deal to put up a stink about it.

“No, this is just a friendly exchange of information, right?” Peter exerts an effort to keep his expression bland, if not actively pleasant.

Cutter offers an insouciant shrug. “Friendly. Sure.”

Peter doesn’t like his tone—it’s too smug, too much like he’s getting more than Peter’s bargained for—but he lets it go, trusting Neal to know what he’s doing.

The terms are easy enough to hammer out, the immunity agreement a boilerplate that Peter himself has enough juice to authorize, though it sours his stomach to sign his name to it.

Cutter grins through a lightning round of texts on a prepaid burn phone, making a show of keeping every connection under the trace time, just in case.

“How do I know there aren’t back-up copies?” Peter asks.

Cutter shrugs. “You don’t,” he answers, shrugging provocatively. “Maybe I’ll be round for another favor some time.”

Neal pushes off the wall and puts a hand on Cutter’s shoulder, leaning in to say, “No, you won’t, or _our_ deal’s off.”

Whatever Neal has offered him, it’s sweet enough to make Cutter take things seriously from there on out.

“Neal, I don’t like this.” He trusts Neal—he does. But he doesn’t trust Cutter, nor does he like the gleam in his eyes. Whatever Neal’s offered him, Cutter thinks he’s getting the best part of the deal, and though Peter’s sure Neal’s capable of handling almost anything, he thinks this case might be the exception. Neal’s perspective can’t be all that clear, given that he’s dealing with the guy who kidnapped, tortured, and raped him.

“It’s fine, Agent Burke. Don’t you trust me?” It’s Neal’s turn to be insouciant, his tone dripping with mock innocence, baiting him. Peter lets his worry color his expression, tightening his lips and furrowing his brow. One of Neal’s eyebrows goes up, a deliberate tell, and Peter lets out a frustrated breath that he doesn’t have to fake and says, “Fine,” grudgingly.

The name Cutter gives them makes a certain amount of sense.

Jake Warner is an ASAC whose career had stalled ten years before he could retire. Scuttlebutt had suggested that he was looking for a lucrative private security job, but the same lack of imagination that had stymied his chances at the Bureau were likewise tanking his outside opportunities.

It didn’t surprise Peter to hear that Warner was building a nest egg by swapping intel with scumbags like Cutter. What surprises him is that Warner had come up with the idea on his own.

He won’t be easy to take down; he’s got a lifetime of experience at covering his ass as a bureaucrat, and from the sounds of it, he and Cutter have had this deal for some time.

Something is still bothering Peter about the whole stinking mess, though, and he asks, “Why did you go after Neal?”

Cutter’s “Uh-uh-uh, that’d be extra,” punctuated with a wagging finger, almost earns him a beating, career be damned, but Peter reins in his homicidal urge when Neal casually clears his throat behind him and Cutter changes his tune.

“Apparently, you and Caffrey were getting too close to something Warner wanted kept in the dark, so he swapped me in for the guy you actually wanted and told me to take care of Caffrey.”

“What case was he worried about?”

But Cutter’s given them all he’s going to, as is apparent by his mulish expression.

“We’re done here, Agent Burke,” Neal says, all business.

“Well, _you’re_ done,” Cutter adds, his voice thick with suggestion.

“Don’t gloat, Ham,” but his chiding words would be more convincing if Neal didn’t sound like he was swallowing a laugh. Peter doesn’t miss that Neal uses Cutter’s first name, however, though it apparently escapes Cutter’s attention. Is Neal leaving him a breadcrumb to follow—how many international criminals were named Hamish, after all?—or is it all a part of the suggestive act he’s putting on for Cutter’s benefit?

Peter tells himself that this is all a part of Neal’s plan, but the way Cutter is looking at Neal, who had walked to the door and is looking back at Cutter invitingly—well, it doesn’t matter if it’s all a put-on: Peter hates it.

“Neal, aren’t you forgetting something?”

Neal raises an eyebrow.

“Dinner with El?” he prompts, throwing it out there, holding his breath.

Neal catches it gracefully, already turning the handle as he throws back, “Right, Enderby’s, eightish.”

“Be on time!”

Neal’s eye-roll is evident in his voice, “Yes, sir.”

Cutter shoots Peter a wink. “He might be a little late.”

Peter chokes back his initial response, which might have given it all away, and instead says, “Take the freight elevator,” thinking of the cameras and of Warner in his office getting news of the breach of protocol. He expects the guy to call him to his office any minute now, and Peter’s looking forward to it. He’ll bait that trap. He only hopes Neal doesn’t get caught in the one he’s setting.

*****

Warner doesn’t disappoint. His fishing is so obvious that Peter has to will away a smirk. He imagines this is how Neal feels when he has a sucker on the hook. He can see the appeal, at least when it’s a matter of leading a bad guy to his richly deserved worse end.

“And Caffrey?”

“I think he’s gone rogue, sir, some kind of deal with Cutter. We’ve got the ankle monitor, though, so we’ll know where he goes.”

In fact, Peter is pretty sure he knows where Neal is taking Cutter, if not why he’s taking him there. Peter prays he’s understood Neal’s intentions because he’s about to lead Warner right to him.

“Good. Good. I’ll leave you to it, then, Agent Burke. Good work.”

Warner can’t get rid of him fast enough, and Peter at last allows himself the indulgence of a smile as he gets on the elevator, heading for his office to try to figure out the best way to play Neal’s game without getting either of them hurt or killed.

*****

The hours he spends waiting to get a confirmation on the location of all the players are some of the longest of Peter’s life.

Neal’s code had been fairly oblique, a reference to a café that Neal had once told Peter was a favorite of his and Kate’s when they visited Boston. From there, he’d had to find out what street it was on—Sullivan—and then determine if the 800 block of Sullivan Street in Greenwich Village was a place Neal was likely to enact a potentially dangerous scenario.

He panics when he discovers that Sullivan Street ends in the 200s. Google Earth shows him upscale boutiques, cafes, and the NYU School of Law’s library. That last has the Caffrey touch, and another minute’s search reveals that the library’s small museum is hosting an exhibit entitled: _Forgery: The Gentleman’s Crime_.

“Son of a bitch,” Peter breathes over his keyboard, reading the caption on an image of the Deuer’s plates, infamous in certain circles as much for the role they played in counterfeiting hundreds of thousands of US dollars in the nineteenth century as for the man for whom they were named, one of the original Confidence Men, said to have inspired Melville’s novel.

Neal would covet them for their aesthetic and historical value. Cutter would see dollar signs on the resale. True crime collectors would pay millions. No wonder Cutter was gloating when they’d left the office.

The law library is open until 8:00pm, so he knows that Neal and Cutter will arrive, probably flashing fake faculty IDs, and then hide themselves somewhere convenient until the doors close.

Peter can’t imagine that a university library’s museum security is on par with any of the systems Neal has cracked in his long and storied career. “Candy from a baby,” he murmurs to himself.

The problem as he sees it will be how to provide back-up without tipping Cutter off. A team of heavily armed and armored LEOs is right out.

He’s interrupted from considering a solo support role by his desk phone. Caller ID tells him it’s Warner. Perfect.

“ASAC Warner, what can I do for you?”

“I’m wondering what you’ve got on Caffrey and Cutter.”

Peter pauses, mind racing, wondering what he can risk revealing. If he tips Warner to the meet, will Warner contact Cutter or introduce an unknown element—a hired gun, for example—or show up himself? Despite his best efforts over the last few hours, Peter hasn’t gathered enough intel to know what Warner might do.

“Well…” Peter says, deciding to go for the stall. “Right now, Neal’s at his loft.”

“Do we have an ETA for the meet?” Warner’s voice is too casual, like a man trying hard to sound like he doesn’t care what the answer will be.

“No, sir,” Peter lies, blowing out a silent breath and rolling his head back on his neck. He focuses on the uniform texture of the ceiling overhead, on the blinking cursor of the empty search box on his monitor, on anything but how deeply screwed they all are if he makes the wrong choice here.

“Let me know when you have anything,” Warner orders, rattling off his work cell number, urging Peter to call any time, day or night.

“Right,” Peter mutters to a dead line as Warner hangs up abruptly. “I’ll be sure to do that.”

*****

He doesn’t.

Peter flashes his badge to the co-ed on the desk at seven o’clock and finds a comfortable spot in the stacks. Apparently, no one is unduly alarmed about _Tax Exemptions on Real Estate: An Increasing Menace_ , because he sees no one until the NYU public safety officer takes a last stroll before closing. Peter dodges her easily.

Then it’s more waiting.

It’s a quarter to nine when he hears the faintest ringing, as though someone has dropped a lock-picking rake on the marble floor of the foyer outside the museum door.

Peter smiles. Neal’s never that clumsy. It’s obviously a signal.

He slinks to the first row of library tables, ducking behind a low shelf housing the _New York Monthly Law Bulletin_. From there, he can see the hem of one perfectly tailored trouser leg and expensive Italian loafers beside a pair of scuffed mechanic’s boots.

Before he can creep closer to the scene, however, a pair of black dress shoes enters the picture, and Peter just has time to make out Warner’s voice before Neal says, “You can come out now” at a ringing volume that echoes through the deserted reading room.

If Neal had been expecting the cavalry, he’s disappointed to find only Peter backing him up, but he doesn’t let anything show on his face.

Cutter’s holding a gun on Warner, who’s holding a gun on Cutter, which might solve all of Peter’s problems if it weren’t for the fact that Neal is between them.

Peter angles himself in such a way that his gun is a reasonable threat to both bad guys, which Warner apparently doesn’t notice because he says, “Agent Burke, I’m glad you’re here. Could you please take the gun from this man and secure him?”

The way he says “this man” suggests that Warner never wasted money on acting lessons. How he got to be an upper level functionary at the FBI with that ruin of a poker face is beyond Peter’s ken. He’s more worried about Cutter’s unwavering barrel, however, which is now trained solely on Neal.

So that’s how it’s going to be, Peter thinks, just as Warner says, “Now, Burke.”

Peter gives him a cool, appraising look and stays where he is.

“Agent Burke!” Warner’s bark might have been more effective if it hadn’t wobbled a little, somewhere between indignation at the disobedience and worry that he’s been found out.

Peter sees the moment Warner refigures his odds, the moment he realizes the jig is well and truly up, and it’s at that moment that Neal deftly dives to one side and more than one gun goes off.

Warner is down, Cutter staggering as Peter rushes to gain control of the scene, but Neal is quicker, wrenching the gun from Cutter’s grip while he’s still off-balance and checking him hard enough that he sprawls face-first on the ground.

Warner is unconscious or dead, bleeding from a chest wound, but Peter’s got eyes only for Neal, who’s aiming Cutter’s gun with a professional calm that belies his typical aversion to weapons.

“Neal,” Peter cautions, and for a second they’re back in the warehouse, Neal’s eyes blank with some unseen horror. His hand tightens on the pistol grip.

“Neal,” Peter says, more gently this time, ignoring his training, ignoring Warner’s gun, fallen inches from his unresponsive hand, ignoring Cutter, whose heavy breathing disturbs the air between them.

He touches Neal’s wrist, relieved when a modicum of recognition floods Neal’s eyes. He doesn’t say, _This isn’t the way_. Neal knows that. If he chooses to shoot, Peter will let him, cover for him, make sure he doesn’t take any legal blame for the crime.

Time in abeyance, in a suspended moment of clarity, Peter understands what it means to love Neal Caffrey: Trusting Neal never to ask Peter to sacrifice his integrity, knowing that he would anyway, God, he’ll do anything— _anything_ —for Neal.

Neal turns the grip in his hand and offers the gun to Peter, steps aside to let Peter cuff Cutter, watches dispassionately as Peter checks Warner’s pulse and calls it all in.

“Diana’s on her way,” Peter offers to a Neal who has gone distant and self-contained.

He responds with a nod.

“You okay?”

An elegant shrug that doesn’t even disturb the lines of his bespoke jacket. Way back in his gaze, something dark gathers, an uneasy, roiling ugliness. This isn’t over. Nothing’s over.

Once again ignoring protocol, Peter steps close to Neal, not touching, not presuming to touch, seeing in Neal’s rigid self-control a kind of desperation. He’s holding on by a thread woven of pride, experience, and a most precious hope.

“I love you,” Peter whispers, barely audible but loud enough. He brings his hand up between them, shielding the gesture from Cutter, who is cuffed to a brass stair railing nearby, surface leg wound bleeding sluggishly, darkening his pant-leg.

Neal’s eyes hone in on the gesture, gaze tracking from Peter’s steady hand to his steadier eyes, to the love he lets into them, to his sorrow for Neal’s pain, to his patience and hope and fear—all of the myriad human conditions that make love such a monumental risk, especially for someone like Neal, for whom love has come only with punishing cost.

The minutest dip of his chin shifts the energy between them, and Peter uses the permission to stroke Neal’s cheek, to trace his jaw and run a gentle thumb over his lower lip. Neal’s eyes grow warm, a kindling promise of greater heat, and Peter stifles a shiver that grows from his belly as he remembers what it felt like to have all that passion focused on him.

A clatter at the door alerts them to the arrival of the troops, but Peter pauses for a second to give Neal a private smile before he steps around him to greet Diana, who’s leading the charge, EMTs moving swiftly to reach Warner, who’d been killed by Cutter’s precise shot.

Peter knows they’re in for a long night of answering questions and filling out paperwork, so he holds up a hand to forestall any immediate questions and touches Neal’s elbow to direct him outside.

There, he calls El to let her know that they’re both alright and that it’s going to be late before they get home.

“I’ll wait up,” El responds immediately in a tone that suggests he’s better off not trying to talk her out of it. “I love you,” she says as they hang up, and Peter says it too, but he’s looking at Neal.

Neal has his hands in his pockets and is leaning against the corner of the building. His face is painted in strobing blue and red alternating with darkness from the shadow of the eaves. He is trying to look cool and collected, Peter knows, but he also knows now that if he were to slip his hand beneath the lapel of Neal’s jacket and rest it against the cotton over his heart, he’d feel that mighty engine pounding harder and faster for that very touch.

He swallows hard, suddenly dry-mouthed, and steels himself for what’s to come.

“Ready?” he asks, and he means for the marathon of questions they’re about to run, but he also means everything that comes after it, which Neal obviously hears because he pushes off of the building with a thrust of his hips, shoots his cuffs, squares his shoulders, and dons his million dollar smile, the one that makes everyone a little warm under the collar.

“Ready,” Neal says, falling in beside Peter, right where he belongs.

*****

Five and a half hours of interrogation disguised as concern and another two spent juggling verbiage on reports in duplicate are enough to douse the desire of men stronger—and younger—than Peter, and by the slump of his shoulders and the wilt of his shirt, Neal seems to be suffering the same numbing exhaustion.

El’s welcoming smile relights the tiniest flame of his hunger, but it’s subdued almost immediately by a monster yawn.

“Oh, you poor things,” she says, drawing them toward the master bedroom, where she moves from Peter to Neal in turns, divesting each of jackets, ties, and shirts. “Shoes,” she says perfunctorily, and they toe them off, after which she moves with brisk efficiency to undo their trousers. She pauses only once, before Neal, her eyes full on his face as she reaches for his belt buckle. His answering look, full of love and hope and fear in equal measures, gives her permission, and Peter swallows around the sudden lump in his throat as he watches Neal surrender to his trust of her—of them.

When they’re down to the basics, El undoes the belt of her robe, revealing beneath it a simple blue nightgown that ends at the tops of her thighs and brings out the brilliance of her eyes. “Bed,” she orders, climbing into the middle and laying down. Neal hesitates a bare second at the far edge, and she catches his look and pats the spot beside her. He slides in without another word, Peter matching him movement for movement on the door side of the bed.

El turns to Peter, laying a warm kiss on his cheek, and then deliberately wriggles toward Neal, who obliges by turning onto his side and spooning her, his arm around her waist, lips ghosting a kiss across her temple. Peter turns onto his side facing them and wraps his arm around them both, fingers brushing Neal’s waist, inner arm nestled against El’s round breast. It’s enough to stir him to half-arousal, and El gives him a knowing grin before saying, “Sleep.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he murmurs in unison with Neal, and that’s the last thing he remembers for a long while.

*****

El is a warm weight against him, her hair tickling his cheek, and Neal’s hand is heavy on Peter’s hip when he wakes up, slowly, to find the room full of bright morning light. They’ve only been asleep a couple of hours, but he feels alive, full of an energy that comes from being safe in this bed with the two people he cannot live without.

Peter’s a practical man. He knows that his odds are better than average of losing Neal to some catastrophe or to the slow entropy of inevitable time. He knows, too, that the statistics favor Elizabeth surviving them both. He doesn’t care about numbers or probabilities or the thousand pragmatic suggestions a part of his brain is making right now.

He cares only that El and Neal and he are here now together. It’s the only inevitability he plans to count on, at least for the next little while.

“Hey,” Neal whispers, his breath blowing a strand of El’s hair.

“Hey.” They smile at each other, sleepy and at peace, until El stirs between them, her thigh brushing Peter’s, and he sees Neal’s eyes widen a fraction as she moves against him. El gives Peter a lingering kiss and then pulls away, holding his gaze for a long moment before she turns over to face Neal, touching his jaw first with infinite tenderness and then kissing him, drawing his lower lip into her mouth for a gentle nip.

Peter leans up on his elbow to watch. As El explores his mouth, Neal’s eyes flutter closed, and Peter watches Neal melt into her slow, deep kisses. Her hand moves beneath the covers, and Neal swallows a sound.

“You don’t have to be quiet,” Peter says, tracing the line of Neal’s hip with his fingers. “I’d love it if you wouldn’t be.”

Neal’s eyes open, gaze darkening, lips parting for a wolfish grin, and when El next touches him, he moans, a sound that arrows straight to Peter’s cock. Still, Peter doesn’t move to join in, content to watch and listen, every sound Neal makes, every breathless, delighted noise from El tightening the twin coils of desire and love in him until his breath is coming in pants.

There’s a flurry of movement as they pull the covers away so that Peter can see everything. Eagerly, Neal slides El’s nightdress over her head, skims her panties off, and she shimmies his boxers down his legs, and then she’s looking over her shoulder at Peter, Neal’s eyes on him, too, and he says, “Please,” unashamed when it comes out like begging, relieved when El at last moves, hooking her leg high over Neal’s and letting him press into her.

El’s breath sighs out of her as Neal grips her ass, his fingers leaving little white impressions. She throws her head back, resting against Peter’s chest, hair brushing his jaw, as Neal makes a series of sharp, shallow thrusts, finding an angle that works for them both. When she cries out, Neal says, “Yeah, that’s it,” and moves into a steady, powerful rhythm that punches little breathy sounds out of El with every push, sounds that Peter eats hungrily from her mouth while he buries his free hand between her legs. He can’t stop himself from pushing his cock into the crease of her ass, feeling dimly Neal’s motions inside her body, echoing the way Neal rocks her against Peter, and loving the way she clenches as together they spill her over the edge.

El rips her mouth away from Peter’s to cry out, and Neal groans, a sustained, deep, animal sound of satisfaction as he finishes inside of her, Peter following only seconds later.

For a while there’s only the susurrus of mingled breaths returning to normal. The air in the bed is humid with the sweat of effort and sharp with the scent of spend. It’s glorious. They lay in various attitudes of abandoned post-coital euphoria, a strand of El’s hair stuck to Peter’s temple, his lax fingers brushing Neal’s thigh across the tempting width of El’s hips.

He wants to spend an eternity in this place, but even thinking that breaks the spell, settling him back in the context of their daily lives, of his responsibilities to the Bureau, of Neal’s role in those responsibilities. He sighs once, very quietly, and feels El’s fingers brushing the arm that crosses her body, feels Neal’s larger hand gripping his own.

“Why don’t I get a shower first, and I can make you both breakfast for the road while you share the shower?”

Bless El for finding a way to stretch out their temporary paradise.

Together, Peter and Neal watch El gather her things and sway, naked and unashamed, into the bathroom.

Together, they sigh in unison, a sound of surrender to the inevitable: They have to get out of this bed.

But not for a short time, anyway, as the shower comes on in the next room and Neal rolls onto his side, facing Peter, and traces the line of his collarbone with one enervated hand. Too tired just now to rise to the occasion, Peter finds a profound pleasure in touching and being touched in this way, with no other motive in mind but connection.

“This is going to be good,” Peter promises as he slides his hand along the tantalizing dip of Neal’s trim waist.

“It already is,” Neal answers, leaning in to brush a kiss across the fragile apple of Peter’s throat.

It is. It really is.


End file.
